Retardation

Retardation is the act or result of delaying; the extent to which anything is retarded or delayed; that which retards or delays.

Retardation or retarded or similar may refer to:

Medicine and biology

 * Mental retardation, also known as intellectual disability, a disorder characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in adaptive behaviors
 * Psychomotor retardation, a slowing-down of thought and a reduction of physical movements in an individual
 * A form of heterochrony, able to cause effects such as neoteny, retention by adults of traits previously seen only in the young

Physics and engineering

 * Retardation factor, in chromatography, the fraction of an analyte in the mobile phase of a chromatographic system
 * Retarded potential, in electrodynamics, electromagnetic potentials generated by time-varying electric current or charge distributions in the past
 * Retarded time, time when an electromagnetic field began to propagate from a point in a charge distribution to an observer
 * Retardation time
 * Retardation, in telegraphy, a kind of distortion of signal pulses; see law of squares
 * Retardation, as opposed to Acceleration

Music

 * Retardation (music), a suspension that resolves upward instead of downward
 * "Retarded" (song), a 1990 single by the band The Afghan Whigs

Other uses

 * A process used in proofing (baking technique)
 * Retard (pejorative), a pejorative term for someone with a mental disability